Law Department Management Blog
Having discussed processes in law departments previously (See my post of April 27, 2006 on the range of processes and Jan. 3, 2006 on contract processes.), I reflected whether there is such a thing as an isolated error not part of a process.
No. All tasks done by someone in a law department are part of some process, by which term I mean a series of related actions that have been done before to achieve a similar end. Even if a lawyer or paralegal were working on something completely one off, something never before done by the law department, you could still embrace those acts under a broader process heading. For example, never been sued under that cause of action? Whatever, the over-arching process that covers the action is to identify a dispute, engage in resolution activities, and resolve the dispute.
Hence, all analysis of errors should be thought of as process analysis (See my post of Nov. 14, 2005 on Six Sigma.). In a like way, every process can be placed in a framework of systems thinking (See my post of Sept. 22, 2005 on that discipline.).